Madhya Pradesh

Blog #5: The low income, low growth trap

India is home to the largest number of poor people in the world, as well as the largest number of people who have recently escaped poverty. Over the next few weeks, this blog series will highlight recent research from the World Bank and its partners on what has driven poverty reduction, what still stands in the way of progress, and the road to a more prosperous India.

We hope this will spark a conversation around #WhatWillItTake to #EndPoverty in India. Read all the blogs in this series, we look forward to your comments.

While India’s economy has grown more rapidly in recent decades, the gains have been unevenly spread, and some regions have fallen further behind the rest of the country. In particular, India’s seven ‘low-income’ states have struggled to shake off the legacy of high consumption poverty, low per capita incomes, poor human development outcomes and the persistence of poverty among tribal populations. The fact that these states are yet to catch-up with the rest of the country illustrates that ‘where you live’ largely determines ‘how well you live'. Addressing this geographic dimension of poverty and well-being will therefore hold the key to improving the lives of millions of Indians.

When India first started using technology for national development, it used technology to build a huge software industry which helped the economy grow in the 1990s. In the decades that followed, with a much improved economy, civic minded Indians set their sights on a much loftier goal – tackling corruption.

In July 2008 The Washington Post reported that nearly a fourth of the 540 Indian Parliament members faced criminal charges, "including human trafficking, immigration rackets, embezzlement, rape and even murder". The criminalization of politics causes a huge drain of public resources and the resulting loss of credibility for politicians dissuades civic minded citizens from stepping forward. Unfortunately the average voter often has little to no idea of the criminal background of some of these Parliament members and hence public opinion cannot be used to throw them out of power. The media, too, does not have capacity to focus on all the corruption cases and usually focuses on the most egregious violations.